Friday, June 19, 2009

Supreme Court Status Check    [Ed Whelan]

As this report prepared by attorneys at the Mayer Brown law firm spells out, the Supreme Court still has 10 cases that await ruling before the justices take their summer break, probably at the end of next week.  The next announcement session is set for 10:00 on Monday.  There will probably be one or two additional announcement sessions next week (and possibly one as late as the following Monday).  SCOTUSblog will live-blog the sessions and post links to the opinions very quickly.  How Appealing is another good source to consult, both for links to the opinions and for early media accounts of the rulings.

The remaining ten cases include the New Haven firefighters matter (Ricci v. DeStefano) that has received so much attention in connection with Judge Sotomayor’s nomination; a challenge to the preclearance requirement under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (N.W. Austin Mun. Util. v. Holder); a case (Safford United Sch. Dist. v. Redding) presenting the question whether a strip search of a student violated the Fourth Amendment; and a challenge to the application of campaign-finance laws to a film critical of Hillary Clinton (Citizens United v. FEC).

I see from the Mayer Brown chart that Justice Scalia currently leads the pack with nine majority opinions. (It would seem from his three majority opinions from the January sitting that Scalia, after conference in Montejo v. Louisiana, won over the necessary fifth vote that turned what would have been a dissent into the majority opinion.)  Justice Kennedy and Justice Alito so far have only five and six majority opinions, respectively, so expect more from them.  (Everyone else has seven or eight.)

06/19 01:38 PMShare